Toto Wolff says Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton can't afford to change their approach despite opening up clear leads in both the drivers' and constructors' championships.

Hamilton took full advantage of Sebastian Vettel's retirement from the Japanese Grand Prix, and won his third race out of the past four to open up a 59-point lead. Valtteri Bottas finished fourth – one place ahead of Kimi Raikkonen – to also help Mercedes extend its constructors' championship advantage to 145 points with a maximum of 172 available.

Despite being able to wrap up both titles at the next race in Austin, Wolff says there will no change to anyone's approach.

"You just need to continue to look at one race at a time," he said. "We still have a diva [of a car] that needs to be understood, for the mid-term obviously, and the way we look at things is how our performance is relative to our main competitors. Therefore I wouldn't say that we are utterly dominant against either Red Bull or Ferrari.

"So we have benefited from Ferrari's misfortune and reliability at the last three races, but it doesn't mean that we are clapping ourselves on the back. On the contrary, we need to continue to push.

"Probably all of us had a look at the points now and that gives you a positive feeling, but I wouldn't want to change the way we approach things looking at each race at a time and trying to maximize the performance at each race weekend. That has so far proved to be the right approach and we want to maintain that."

Wolff also played down Hamilton's comments that he felt a vibration from his power unit towards the end of the race at Suzuka, with Max Verstappen rapidly closing in on the race leader at the same time.

"We didn't see anything on the engine. We looked at all the metrics, but we need to really understand what he meant. My assumption is that if you are in the lead and your main competitor has DNF'd you hear everything. The same applies for us on the pit wall and in the garage, you just want the race to finish."